Increasing Your Influence at Work All-in-One For Dummies

Christina Tangora Schlachter

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781119489061
• eBook ISBN: 9781119489085
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Workplace Culture
• Index: Business

Get ahead in the workplace by influencing others

Influence is a timeless topic for business leaders and others in positions of power, but the world has evolved to the point where everyone needs these skills. No matter your job, role, rank, or function, if you want to get things done you need to know how to influence up, down, across, and outside the organization.

Increasing Your Influence at Work All-in-One For Dummies shows you how to contribute more fully to important decisions, resolve conflicts more easily, lead and manage more effectively, and much more. Plus, you'll discover how to develop the most important attributes necessary for influence—trustworthiness, reliability, and assertiveness—and find out how to move beyond.

• Includes easy-to-apply information for influencing managers, peers, and subordinates
• Shows you how to build trust with your co-workers and cultivate reliability through consistency and being personal
• Illustrates how influencing others in the office helps you enjoy a greater measure of control over your work life
• Helps you advance your career more rapidly than others

No matter who you are, where you work, or what your professional goals are, achieving more influence in the workplace is critical for success.

Book 1

Body Talk: Influencing through Communication and Body Language

Contents at a Glance

1. Chapter 1: Building Effective Verbal Communication Techniques
   1. Great Communicators Are Made, Not Born
   2. Verbal Communication: When Words Matter Most
   3. Cooperative Language: Verbal Communication at Its Finest
2. Chapter 2: Grasping Nonverbal Cues
   1. Noting Nonverbal Techniques that Speak Volumes
   2. Becoming an Expert in Active Listening
3. Chapter 3: Defining Body Language
   1. Discovering How Body Language Conveys Messages
   2. Examining Key Types of Gestures
   3. Getting the Most Out of Body Language
   4. Appreciating Cultural Differences
4. Chapter 4: Working with Different Communication Styles
   1. Taking On Direct and Passive Communication Styles
   2. Saying Yes to Assertiveness
   3. Knowing Your Communication Style
   4. Sharpening Your Communication Style
5. Chapter 5: Influencing through Communication
   1. Understanding the Importance of Effective Communication
   2. Communicating Quicker than the Speed of Conscious Thought
   3. Understanding Why People Say Yes
   4. If You Have the Need to Influence, You Get to Do All the Work
   5. Navigating the Political Landscape
   6. Ethically Influencing and Persuading for Results
   7. It Takes Two to Influence
   8. If You Aren’t Getting the Desired Results, Change Your Communication
6. Chapter 6: Influencing through Body Language
   1. Creating a Positive Environment
   2. Pointing Your Body in the Right Direction
   3. Negotiating Styles

Chapter 1

Building Effective Verbal Communication Techniques

IN THIS CHAPTER

Communicating clearly and effectively in every situation

Discovering how the smallest words can have a big impact

Turning a confrontational conversation into a cooperative one

In everyday situations, people rely on the familiar back-and-forth of verbal communication. You probably don’t walk down the street in the morning and pause to think about what to say or what to do when a neighbor says hello. Instead, you have a fairly common pattern based on an existing relationship; you smile, say “hi” back, perhaps engage in small talk, and go on with your day. For most of your relationships, this process works fine. During critical work conversations, however, the intent changes the process. For this situation, you need effective and explicit communication techniques to manage the dialogues and to ensure that the results are focused and clear. Building effective communication techniques will catapult the success of a critical conversation.

In this chapter, you get the 4-1-1 on how to communicate clearly and effectively. You discover techniques that help build productivity and improve employee morale with different verbal cues you can use in every conversation, especially the critical ones. Part of this chapter addresses examples of open, authentic, and explicit conversations. Finally, you find out how to turn confrontational language into cooperative discussions that get results.

Great Communicators Are Made, Not Born

Although people have been communicating for most of their lives, critical conversations are different. Critical conversations are deliberate events that are targeted on results. In most cases, the main goal of the critical conversation is to improve working relationships or organizational results. That goal is a lot different from leading a project meeting, sending an email about a status update, or even presenting the company’s results to shareowners.

A leader may be a wonderful speaker who communicates frequently and with transparency. But even the best communicators can get caught up in the message when delivering a critical point.

To understand why communication skills are so critical to a successful conversation, briefly walk through what happens when people engage in dialogue. First, the sender has an idea, translates this idea into words, and sends it. Then the receiver gets the message, applies meaning to the idea, and gives feedback, making the receiver the new sender. Every back-and-forth exchange of words (and even nonverbal cues) continues with this process.

Communication is a transaction in which both parties continuously send and receive messages. Even before the initiator speaks, the receiver is observing nonverbal signals. Verbal communication and nonverbal communication are the building blocks to a successful critical conversation. For more on nonverbal techniques, check out Book 1, Chapter 2.

Now imagine a chain of this communication. Back and forth, each time with the other party interpreting what was or wasn’t said and adding meaning to the information. A message’s meanings can easily become distorted.

Here’s an example to show how the simple act of communicating can turn a bad situation into a horrible one.

• Kate: “Hi, John. Thanks for agreeing to meet with me today. I wanted to talk with you about a concern I have with your behavior in team meetings recently.”
• John (getting a bit defensive): “A concern. What concern?”
• Kate: “Well, it’s hard for me to believe that you did this because I wasn’t in the room, but Kasha came into my office complaining that you have been raising your voice, and —”
• John (cutting in): “How can you give me any feedback when you weren’t in the meeting?”
• Kate: “Sounds like you’re mad. If you’ll let me speak, I can help.”
• John promptly rolls his eyes and tunes out the conversation, allowing Kate to speak all she wants.

Right off the bat, Kate sends the message that she has a concern, which may seem like a fair statement. What Kate does wrong is to use words that lead John to believe the problem is entirely on his end (“your behavior”). The situation just gets worse when Kate says “it’s hard for me to believe this.” Perhaps she’s trying to add some humor or use a less accusatory tone, but John interprets this statement as an accusation that his actions are so wrong even his boss can’t imagine they happened. (Find out how tone and other nonverbal cues impact a conversation in Book 1, Chapter 2) Words make a giant difference in how the receiver accepts and agrees on the desired result of the critical conversation.

The good news is that with simple strategies, you won’t fall into Kate’s slip-ups. When you communicate well, participants will be committed to improving their working relationships in the course of improving the business. When you don’t communicate correctly, the other parties will be put on the defensive and refuse to engage in the conversation. You can see how the former option gives you a much better outcome.

Verbal Communication: When Words Matter Most

Effective verbal communication employs a number of simple and not-so-simple tools during different situations. The goal of mastering critical conversation is to know what the tools are, without using an overformulaic “toolkit” approach. Success depends on the relationship the two parties have before the conversation takes place and whether they can understand and respect each other. Being interested in and respectful of others’ points of view through your choice of words will contribute greatly to open communication and cooperation.

According to some communication experts, body language and other nonverbal communication skills account for more than 90 percent of the way an individual receives information from a sender. Book 1, Chapters 2 and 3 dive into all the nonverbal cues and body language that facilitate a successful critical conversation.

Facts, opinions, and gossip

Emotions can get high during a discussion, so write down the feedback you want to give. If an employee is late, write down when she was late. If a customer is abusing your employees during customer service calls, write down the specific examples of when the customer stepped over the lines of professionalism. This prep work isn’t meant to be a witch-hunt! Quite the opposite. Having facts to back up why you’re initiating the conversation helps the receiver know that you care enough to get to the bottom of the problem and that you aren’t just presenting hearsay.

But just having...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Book 1: Body Talk: Influencing through Communication and Body Language
• Book 2: Exerting Influence through Important Conversations
• Book 3: Peace Talks: Having Influence When You’re the One Involved in Conflict
• Book 4: Go, Team! Building Influence across Teams and Functions
• Book 5: Boomers and Beyond: Influencing across Generations
• Book 6: Who’s the Boss? Becoming an Influential Company Leader
• About the Authors
• Connect with Dummies
• Index
• End User License Agreement